The Great Plague
by FanSlewFantasy
Summary: Yaoi, Rapefic, M for a reason, Gore. Arthur, 'Mister England' was on his way home one dismal evening many years ago. On his journey, he was picked up by a stranger who took him home and showed him what it really meant to suffer an epidemic. DL,DR.


A story set in a time frame, a tale told already and waiting to be told again, over and over, every time another makes the choice to read these words

… ..

_Text is impassionate; it presents its face precisely the same time after time._

_Recorded stories are constant, they are prepared to give themselves so often as you choose to read them, and they will never fade away._

_Even time, that fickle mistress, is suspended by words. Though those who wrote a history may die, and the tale's folk themselves will pass, each time you see these words anew it's like they never left. Time keeps moving forward, and yet, paradoxically within the binding of a written text, the tale keeps replaying, over and over. A person is born, then dies, and everything in between. On each page, a frozen moment, a perfectly preserved fragment of lives that may have ended._

_Let it be noted that those of whom this story affects are already long passed from this world. The ticking of a watch on a chain in the rain and the faint click of a buckled shoe on a twisted stone path have long since faded to silence. The weary sigh from a tired man is no longer relevant, and the steam coiling on the surface of a fresh corpse was years ago evaporated, disappearing forever into the waterbank of humanity._

_That being said, prepare to read the words in which all these things are preserved, very much present, each second continuing to march in a constant loop around and around again, deep into the heart of immortality._

… ..

Arthur Kirkland avoided this part of town.

Men huddled against walls arching high, blotting out the dark and bitter sky. Tarry rain spattered pale cheeks, dampened greasy blonde hair as he edged past heaps of rank rags and rats, ankle deep in garbage, boots slapping mutely in sludge and slime. Water weighted his woollen cloak, tarnished silver clasps hidden, to avoid robbery. He tightened his grip on the sheathed knife at his waist, over stepping a groaning young boy, on his death bed. The smell emanating off his diseased flesh was rank, and made Arthurs gut heave.

Things were more dismal than he thought.

The plague had come in the summer, and lingered all the way through the fall. Though many had died, and the illness had loitered, the worst was supposedly over. Winter mounted the country, easing the aching oozing wounds bubbling across Arthurs shoulder blades, healing the scars to silver tissue and knotting the fraying edges of pitted skin in union once more. The last of the death would pass, and Arthur's scars would fade. Things were grim, but hopefully, not for much longer.

He pressed his lips together and kept walking. He didn't usually come down Westminster. It was because of the river, and the flooding that had brought and influx of rancid waste to the foot of his empire. Compared to that, even the walk down this mangy alley, through twisting labyrinthine murk and miasma, was better. Faster. The streets that sentineled the river were flooded, the main arterial roads through the city impassable. And still the slick rain came down, silvering and oiling all it touched, fermenting in cracked cobbles and souring cruel stone. Each day the flood rose, and the rot grew worse.

The winter was cruel, and though the sores on his shoulders were healed, the ache in his back, slowly decomposing bone at the base of his spine turning to coal and muck, was growing darker each day. It ached and it screamed and he could do nothing as his people lingered in the streets and died, clogging his capillaries, turning red blood toxic and clawing through a shaking, dilapidated system of flesh and bone.

He pulled his hood up, accidently standing on a rat, the sick crunching repulsive and the squeal tearing in his ears.

"Shit!" he swore, loosing his footing. A rough, jagged arrow of pain ripped his spine as he slipped and for a horrid moment, he thought he would fall into the gutter, into an opaque and inky puddle of slime.

But someone caught him.

A hand, pale white and elegant, gripped his twisting wrist. It was bony almost, every knuckle prominent, the chords binding it tensed and raised to the surface in a painfully demanding grip. The gloves that the owner wore were not gloves at all. Merely tubes of leather tied with grubby lace around jutting wrists. His thick black cloak dripped off slender, almost wire shoulders. The glint of silver, a choking half-ring around his throat in place of a ruff, two curling silver spirals either end and baring his arterial vain to the teeth of the cold night air. His face was shadowed by a wide brimmed hat, and Arthur swallowed.

"Careful sir." The stranger's voice was musical and sliver, but minored in a sinister, slicing way that got under your skin and permeated your bones. It sent Arthur shivering, though it was humid, in the dank, enclosed alley. "You wouldn't want to land in this, you may get sick."

"Ah, yes. Thank you stranger." It was a struggle, but he managed to wench his wrist from the gauntlet of the others fingers. The gripping hand remained though, clutching the air as if it was solid.

"Not at all, fellow gentleman. But if you don't mind me asking what a fine sir like yourself is doing down this way at all. It's not very safe; even I can tell you don't belong here."

And the question, though simple to answer, hung in the rank air, stickying the silence fractured with pitter-patter rain. Arthur's breath was catching, deepening for some reason. He wiped the point of his wrist briefly over his sweat beaded brow and ruffled his cloak.

"I'm headed home of course." He tried to sound as indignant as possible, but failed. The rain began dolloping harder. It echoed in and around him ghostily. He felt sick. "I could ask the same of you."

"Me? oh." A light laugh. In the sunshine, coming from the sweet lips of a young man hand in hand with his lover, it would have been a handsome laugh. A kind one. Yet in the ringing emptiness, the sky a mere crack of blue-black above and bleeding disease all over the earth, it was gluggy and distorted. Gut churning. "Well, I'm hiding here."

"Aren't you afraid you will get killed?"

"Of course not! I'm no more afraid than you, mister England. I tell you, I'm your fellow. No human hand could kill me."

That merry, glossily evil laugh (was it evil? Arthur couldn't tell. Maybe it was just the setting, which convinced him so,) rang again. Arthur inhaled sharply, four times as uncomfortable as he was before.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Nonsense, mister England. Come with me. We have much to talk about."

… ..

The stranger had rooms not far from the alley, and had dragged Arthur along almost without complaint from the latter. _Why_ was something Arthur couldn't quite figure out. It just seemed, for some reason, that whenever he tried to open his mouth, whenever he tried to complain or resist, his lips were too heavy, his reactions too slow. The rain on his skin felt different, now the stranger had laced their fingers, and he followed as though he had no free will, as if he was a sorry puppet doing as he was guided by a faceless man of the night.

Calmness had settled over him, and the sick smell of a rancid city had faded. Everything had dulled, except for the awareness of the hand gripping his. Was it too hot? The touch seemed to burn. But then, it wasn't hot at all. Those fingers were frigid like ice, and tighter than before. Sharp nails dug into the back of his hand, but he didn't even notice. The nails were as sharp as surgical steel, and the blood trickling over his knuckles was washed away by the rain, spattering on polluted stone in their wake.

"Come in." the stranger invited him into the maw of a crooked, menacing little building seemingly nestled in the heart of the street laced maze. "Just mind your wet shoes on the rushes."

With that, he opened the door.

Within the room was salvation.

It was light, illuminated by a host of candles set in brackets around low stone walls. Dry clean rushes, smelling faintly of lavender, covered the floor. Arthur slipped his boots off trance like and padded into the centre of the room, where a crackling fire on a open hearth spewed hot, delicious smoke into the room. The ventilation was simple, a stone chimney directly above, no windows let any heat out, and the air smelled almost clean. Even the bed in the corner looked fresh, and of high quality. The table was worn but homely. If he hadn't just been beyond those doors, he could believe he was in a farmhouse a long way away. Wales, maybe. In the autumn.

"Take off your coat." The stranger slid those numb heat hands across Arthur's tender shoulders, undoing the clasps and meeting no resistance. Like a doll, Arthur let him, and the cloak dropped wetly to the floor, where it was scooped graciously onto the hearth to dry. Beneath, Arthur's white silk shirt, embroidered with baby's breath and stained and spotted across the shoulders where his sores had scraped, betrayed his rank. His breeches were fine and slashed, revealing soft green damask beneath. He shivered, bathing in the heat of the fire.

"Thank you." he managed. The stranger bobbed his head, yet to remove any of his own outer wear.

"You're welcome. Would you like something to eat or drink?"

Arthur shook his head.

He wasn't sure, how long he stood there gazing into the fire, letting the warmth stain him and cleanse him and slowly, the hypnotic state of separation he had been in faded. His breathing calmed. His eyes grew heavy.

"You know." he spoke to the stranger, who had taken a seat on the hearth and was prodding the fire with a iron rod. "I shouldn't have come here with you. How do I know you wont try to kill me."

"I told you mister England. I'll not kill you any more than you will kill me."

There it was again. Mister England. Whoever this stranger was, he knew something he wasn't supposed to.

"How do you know who I am?"

"I know who all of you are. Mister China, misters Italy… I've met them all you know. Lovely men." The stranger rose to his feet, finally loosing the catches on his cloak. "I've plans to return to France soon, but I thought, while I was in Europe, I would stop by and say hello. I've been here before quite a few times but never really stayed long enough to meet you properly. So I thought, 'why not?' It's about time I introduced myself formally."

Arthur drew a deep breath. If the stranger knew France, then surely he didn't mean harm. Because sure, he and France had their ups and downs, but Francis and him were a team weren't they? Through good times and bad?

Arthur relaxed a little more, and observed as the stranger began to take form.

His clothes were not as nice as England's. Much simpler, breathy cotton, they clung to what could have been an impoverished frame hung with sinewy muscle. He wore a lot of leather, stained black with tar, and jewels. Many dripping jewels in black and red. Gauze bound most of his arms, bloody flowers blossoming beneath the white cloth, and with a jolt Arthur wondered if he was ill, if he had the sickness weighing heavy on his nation and his back. The throat bearing that heavy silver ring extended and the stranger removed his hat.

The face beneath was hallowed.

The dancing shadows from the fire flickered deeply across the angles of a wide lipped, pointed nosed youth. Cheekbones high and full commanded attention. Eyes almonded dangerously and dark as obsidian glass glimmered as they rested on Arthurs face, his hair was black. Like coal or satin night, it waved carelessly across slender shoulders and dripped over his pale skinned cheeks.

"Do you have a name?"

The youth nodded, lips pressing together in thought. Though he looked barely fifteen, he was taller than Arthur. The faint tilt and the corner of his eyes suggested an oriental origin.

"My human name is Yersina."

"Yersina… it sounds oriental."

"Mmm… I guess you could say I hail from around those parts."

"Well then, what's your national name?"

A dangerous smile curled the edge of the mans lips. The temperature in the room plummeted and the shadows leapt, drowning out the flickering candlelight.

"National name? Oh no, no, no mister England… you have it all wrong. I'm not a nation… I'm not a nation at all."

… ..

"Screaming will do you no good, my fellow gentleman. Now behave, please. It will be easier on both of us."

The dark eyed man named Yersina wrestled Arthur backwards, talons sinking into the soft flesh on the side of his neck and slitting nerves precisely. Paralysis crippled one arm, and Arthur shrieked, crashing to the rough stone floor beneath rushes that whispered with each patient footstep that beats took.

"Now if you don't mind, my new friend, we have a little bit of business to attend to. But don't worry, it will be over in a moment I promise. By the looks of that shirt, you're used to my touch. This wont hurt as much as you think." he seized Arthurs functional arm and tugged him to his feet, almost carefully, before throwing him with inhuman force against the far wall. A delighted, high pitched giggle, sharp and poisonous, slipped from his lips and Arthur jerked at the sound, caught in that ropey state of numbness where it took all he had to tear even the faintest of screams from his voicebox.

Those nails… it was in his scraping nails, the toxin that flooded through veins and dulled minds, that seized muscles and infected just enough… but not too much.

Yersina darted the tip of a red tongue over his bloodied fingertips, sharp teeth grazing, throat contracting a little as his own poison worked in his mouth.

"Can't run can you, mister England? You can't run away from death. You can't run away from hell."

As if hearing his words, the fire cracked and the shadows dancing on the wall turned ghoulish. Lower, darker, frenzied.

"You know who I am yet then?" he carried on, untying his shirt slowly and letting the cloth slide off with ease. His torso too, was bandaged. The stains spreading across the poultices and bindings were sticky and black-red. They smelled faintly of festering flesh. Arthur recognised the wounds as plague for sure this time around. He didn't know how he had missed the scent before. It was overpowering, choking him, making him want to gag. "Surely you have figured it out by now. My fingers traced the map of this city, of all your cities. They slashed and silted veins, bruising arteries and pooling great mangey pustules beneath your delicate, frozen skin… recognise me now mister England? Want to take a guess?"

Arthur shook his head fiercely, trying to crawl backward to no effect. His retching breath was leaving him, dizziness staticed the edge of his vision.

"Wait until the summer comes! By God…!" the voice, demonic now, and ringing, crescendoed. A fearful contraction seized Arthur's lower body. "Ring a ring of roses… everyone can wear them. Merry like a noose of flowers around scrawny, unfed necks. Let your cities burn mister England, submit to the filth and succumb to poverty. Let your people _die_, because death is a release for them, from this hell you call your body. Creatures like you make me _sick._" Heavy boots thumped over the floor and Arthur was lifted by his hair, roots ripping and complaining in agony. He was cast roughly onto the bed, and the wood creaked in mocking laughter. "You don't care about your people, you defile them with your every breath. Let the queen live here then, in your holy of holies…" a dangerous finger traced a redhot ribbon across Arthur's shirt. Blood blossomed red through the cloth on his chest. An x was made, over his heart.

"Let the rain wash all this clean." His hair was pulled roughly again; a mighty throb from his temples, Arthur was struck with the vision of the country. Of fresh air and grass.

"And let the rest remain behind, wallowing in filth and scum."

And despite the poison coursing through neurons and axioms, Arthur managed to scream when his trousers were yanked southways. The chords tying them caught on his hips, and slicked them of a layer of skin where they were tightest. Shattering the haze of hallucinogen he squirmed and kicked, breaking into a sweat and howling, ripping black hair and drowning, drowning in that sickly, cryptesque scent.

"Shut up!"

"No! Get off me! Who are you what are you-"

"I SAID SHUT UP, MISTER ENGLAND!" jerking Arthurs neck, a sharp crack echoed in the space and all struggling ceased. The scream though was blood curdling and strenuous. The broken neck that would have killed a human throbbing right through his bruised and bleeding body. Seeing an opportunity, knowing he had about three minutes before Arthur regained the use of his arms, Yersina tore the rest of the clothes and jewellery from both their bodies, ignoring the bandages that loosened around his waist, and the thick blackened blood that glooped down his thighs. Naked, but for gauze and leather sleeves, he was slender and not of foul build. His arms were a little longer than usual; his legs too, reached a little too far. Black eyes glittered with blood now, his lips had flushed red, as though wearing cochineal. A cracked smile, the tip of one sharp finger nibbled by perfect white teeth. His neck ring was bruising, where it pressed to his throat. Almost all his skin was blossoming purple as the weight of humanity slid from him and the acrid stench of death settled in a cloak across his shoulders once more.

"Stop screaming." Voice still light and tinkling, but echoing deeply behind Arthurs blurred and stinging eyes, he took his place on the bed. "Give me your arms."

Arthur howled anew when his limp arms were yanked above his head, the pins and needles sewing his neck back in place were on fire, and beginning to spread down his back to his legs.

"Open them."

With A new crushing crack, Yersina yanked one of Arthur's legs backward, folding it, breaking a hip carelessly in the process. Fingers regaining the ability to move clawed at the leather of his wrists, but he held Arthur's arms in a death grip, grinding the bones together to almost dust.

Arthur had never been in more pain in his life. The searing daemons burning their way through his body wound muscles and snapped them loose again as he healed, he knew if his hip would mend this way, it would need to be broken again in order to set right. His flesh burned where the other man touched him, and the sores on his back were split again and bleeding. Hot steaming blood trickling down the arch of his throbbing back.

His aggressor paused for a moment, surveying the rotted and smashed up country through half cast eyes. His lip curled, and his gaze traced the inside of a swollen claw-marked thigh.

"So these are your vital regions hmm?" nails skated the agitated flesh and Arthur whimpered, eyes squeezing shut.

"Don't… please. I'll give you anything."

"You have nothing I want." The nails came to rest at the base of a flaccid cock, nestled among thick dark blonde curls. "And if you did, I would just take it."

"Don't…" Arthur found himself moaning for mercy, begging, unsure if he should ask God or the devil for salvation. "Please don't. Think of my people…"

"I am thinking of your people. I always think of your people." Digging his nail in, he dragged the finger down over testicles and across a tender perineum. "And in here… all up here in the small of your back isn't it? In your hips. In your man-womb, you bear a great black mass of stricken citizens and hopeless death." His caress around the edge of Arthurs most tender and private place was cruel, it ached, it was dirty, and it was evil. "Well, it's a good thing I take pity on them, isn't it? Let me put them out of their misery."

And Arthur was sure his pelvis cracked, his legs ossifying into bent pins, when the other slammed himself inside, too big and tearing, blood lubricating the way. He gasped, blanking for a second in searing pain, before having that agony thrust inside of him again. From above, a delighted groan echoed, magnified by the mocking laughter of shadow fiends having a raucous orgy on the walls.

"God, mister England… its good being merciful, don't you think?" another slam, the silhouette of two bodies heaved in black on stone. The bed creaked morosely.

"Please…"

"Begging will get you no-where…" a quick nick with his claws ensured England couldn't move the hands fixed above his head, and Yersina brought his hand down, seizing Arthurs penis and giving a surprisingly gentle pull. "It only makes it more fun for me."

A gentle pulsing rhythm teased Arthur to semi-hardness against his will, a choked whine expressed the effort he put into arching his body, trying to push the stronger man of him, out of him. Trying to get away.

He could feel his hip knitting at the odd angle.

"There, see." Delicate fingers, calculating and precise, slid back the nation's foreskin, thumb stroking the surface of the newly exposed head. The helpless cry emitted this time was seeded with self hatred. And finally content that his victim was ready, Yersina withdrew once more.

The sensation of having him thrust back inside was to Arthur, the same as having a knife inserted under his toenail and hammered in with a rock. It tore and it burnt anew. His erection fell almost instantly limp, and swearing Yersina worked his had to get it back.

"Do I have to numb this too?" he hissed, teeth gritted, hair falling forward in a thick black sheet. "Its no fun that way, mister England, you should know that."

And so he forced himself even harder inside, with a little bit of subtle precision, nudging a place that ached deliciously right up Arthurs spine. He thought of bruises, the way they feel good when they heal, and you press your fingers in. He thought of being full. No, he _was_ full. Full and crying, gasping, heart struggling to keep up with the desperate heaving and hammering of his body as his harasser worked on. In. out. In. out… each time striking that spot, and hurting in the most exquisite way.

"It's good in here, mister England." Eyes maniacal, distorted smile casting a dark, unpleasant twist on a face that would be handsome to a stranger. He had bitten his lip in ecstasy, blood trickling down his chin a dark infected violet. His hair buffeted forward and backward around his shoulders, tossed by the motion of his hips. Arthur arched and cried beneath him, gasping each time a new bone fractured, legs dragging those murderous hips closer until their motions were matched and Arthur was screaming. A great blood curdling blur of rancid bliss gnashing in his lower body. He could feel the sickness spreading, the heaving pile of the dead building outside his door. His home in flames as the pestilence claimed every man woman and child. The low keens of the dying resonated in his ears, and his body kept killing them, it kept tainting them, exterminating them one by one in hot, boiling pleasure of the hells flesh. The union grew to a frenzied pinnacle, Yersina's grunts low and victorious as Arthur let himself be impaled and driven to madness by the epidemic that was raping not just his body but his mind and his blood and his bones. Both bodies slapped, panting, gasping, clutching claws to one another and Arthur shuddered when the lacerated place inside was rubbed just right. Close… so close…

"It's there isn't it?" the nightmare voice purred. "This is the spot. The very heart of all that is wrong with you and your land." Yesina held his hips firm, refusing to let Arthur fall without admitting to it. The macabre dance was ending on a crescendo and a crash, a pulsing writing chain of sound ripped reluctantly from the throat of another nation defeated. He must have it so.

Arthur made a noise not human, not animal, trying to buck his hips onto Yesina's body, wanting to sink into the endless void of little death.

"Say it, mister England. Say that's the place…"

"t-that's it." His words were almost indecipherable, mind almost blanked. "that's the place."

And a vindictive curling smile twisted the wrought features of a rapist when Arthur was brought to writhing, back arching release. Ropes of dirtied come filthied the bloody dressings of infected wounds and he rode it out to the edge of consciousness, sobbing and hurting and wishing he could die. Wishing everything would die when the searing rush of seamen in his body and husky, rapturous grunt assured him that Yersina had finished too and the rain came down harder, the fire crackled low in the grate.

And the great rattling breath of death made its home in raw, staining lungs.

… ..

_And like a marching hand marking minutes on a clock, seasons come and go just like the seasons of our lives._

_Consequences echo, generations pass. Recorded words remain silent until someone reads them aloud and they are fresh once more. Scabs like, in a way, pealed and bared to the fresh infection, like the scraped sores on Arthurs back the summer 38,000 died. _

_Since then, the times have changed. Relevance is no longer borne, the penalty has been smoothed and swirled into the muck and mire we call human life on planet earth._

_But Arthur watches his back._

_And somewhere, in the darkness, with a new name x, a new pandemic smile,_

_The man with the black hair understands that the story never changes_

_No-matter what the time._

**~FIN~**

A/N: okey, so guess wut?

IM GOING TO ITALY BITCHEZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! ('bitchezzzzzz' I use in the most respectful and chummy of senses of course.)  
>this means that this will be my last fic posted for about a month. sorry bros and hos, but im not allowed to take my laptop with me. regretfully, all my writing+pr0n+photoshop is on my laptop. Im more or less Out Of Action for like, a month. T^T<p>

oh well, italy is worth it right?

PASTAAAAAAAAAAAA!

P.S. those of you who would like a sneak preview at what I have coming up when I get back from my trip, check out my profile and take a vote on the poll for which story I should publish first. ^^ options include chapter two of 'chibi romano and pervert spain' a 'USxUKxCAN' hard yaoi fic, an gauken AU USxCAN novella and a story where Greece masterbates!

Hell yes.


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